This invention relates to storage systems in general and in particular, to managing transformations of data stored in snapshots in a storage system.
Data stored in systems such as file systems or database systems is often transformed for various reasons. For example, if an application associated with the data is upgraded, the new version of the application may require different format of certain fields. Accordingly, the data of these fields may have to be transformed to conform to the requirements of the new version of the software.
Such transformation is typically performed using instructions stored in scripts. Several applications and systems, for example, database systems are often complex and require help from experts for development and testing of the transformation script as well as for managing execution of the transformation scripts. Execution of such transformations is further complicated by the fact that the system may be a production system that is constantly in use. Execution of these transformations may require the system to be made unavailable for significant periods of time. Enterprises typically cannot afford to take production systems offline for long periods of time. As product release cycles shorten, transformation of data is required more and more frequently. As a result, conventional techniques for performing transformations are often expensive and take significant amount of time and resources.